Improving crop yield from agriculturally-significant plants including, among others, corn, soybean, sugarcane, rice, wheat, vegetables, and cotton, has become increasingly important. In addition to the growing need for agricultural products to feed, clothe and provide energy for a growing human population, climate-related effects and pressure from the growing population to use land other than for agricultural practices are predicted to reduce the amount of arable land available for farming. These factors have led to grim forecasts with respect to food security, particularly in the absence of major improvements in plant biotechnology and agronomic practices. In light of these pressures, environmentally sustainable improvements in technology, agricultural techniques, and pest management are vital tools to expand crop production on the limited amount of arable land available for farming.
Insects, particularly insects within the order Lepidoptera, are considered a major cause of damage to field crops, thereby decreasing crop yields in infested areas. Lepidopteran pest species which negatively impact agriculture include, but are not limited to, fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda), beet armyworm (Spodoptera exigua), bertha armyworm (Mamestra configurata), black cutworm (Agrotis ipsilon), cabbage looper (Trichoplusia ni), soybean looper (Chrysodeixis includens), velvetbean caterpillar (Anticarsia gemmatalis), green cloverworm (Hypena scabra), tobacco budworm (Heliothis virescens), granulate cutworm (Agrotis subterranea), armyworm (Pseudaletia unipuncta), western cutworm (Agrotis orthogonia), European corn borer (Ostrinia nubilalis), navel orangeworm (Amyelois transitella), corn root webworm (Crambus caliginosellus), sod webworm (Herpetogramma licarsisalis), sunflower moth (Homoeosoma electellum), lesser cornstalk borer (Elasmopalpus lignosellus), codling moth (Cydia pomonella), grape berry moth (Endopiza viteana), oriental fruit moth (Grapholita molesta), sunflower bud moth (Suleima helianthana), diamondback moth (Plutella xylostella), pink bollworm (Pectinophora gossypiella), pink stem borer (Sesamia inferens), gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar), cotton leaf worm (Alabama argillacea), fruit tree leaf roller (Archips argyrospila), European leafroller (Archips rosana), Asiatic rice borer, or rice stem borer (Chilo suppressalis), rice leaf roller (Cnaphalocrocis medinalis), corn root webworm (Crambus caliginosellus), bluegrass webworm (Crambus teterrellus), southwestern corn borer (Diatraea grandiosella)), surgarcane borer (Diatraea saccharalis), spiny bollworm (Earias insulana), spotted bollworm (Earias vittella), Old World cotton bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera), corn earworm, soy podworm or cotton bollworm (Helicoverpa zea), sod webworm (Herpetogramma licarsisalis), European grape vine moth (Lobesia botrana), citrus leafminer (Phyllocnistis citrella), large white butterfly (Pieris brassicae), imported cabbageworm, or small white butterfly (Pieris rapae), tobacco cutworm, or cluster caterpillar (Spodoptera litura), and tomato leafminer (Tuta absoluta).
Historically, the intensive application of synthetic chemical insecticides was relied upon as the pest control agent in agriculture. Concerns for the environment and human health, in addition to emerging resistance issues, stimulated the research and development of biological pesticides. This research effort led to the progressive discovery and use of various entomopathogenic microbial species, including bacteria.
The biological control paradigm shifted when the potential of entomopathogenic bacteria, especially bacteria belonging to the genus Bacillus, was discovered and developed as a biological pest control agent. Strains of the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) have been used as a source for insecticidal proteins since it was discovered that Bt strains show a high toxicity against specific insects. Bt strains are known to produce delta-endotoxins that are localized within parasporal crystalline inclusion bodies at the onset of sporulation and during the stationary growth phase (e.g., Cry proteins), and are also known to produce secreted insecticidal protein. Upon ingestion by a susceptible insect, delta-endotoxins as well as secreted toxins exert their effects at the surface of the midgut epithelium, disrupting the cell membrane, leading to cell disruption and death. Genes encoding insecticidal proteins have also been identified in bacterial species other than Bt, including other Bacillus and a diversity of other bacterial species, such as Brevibacillus laterosporus, Lysinibacillus sphaericus (“Ls” formerly known as Bacillus sphaericus) and Paenibacillus popilliae. 
Crystalline and secreted soluble insecticidal protein toxins are highly specific for their hosts and have gained worldwide acceptance as alternatives to chemical insecticides. For example, insecticidal toxin proteins have been employed in various agricultural applications to protect agriculturally important plants from insect infestations, decrease the need for chemical pesticide applications, and increase yields. Insecticidal toxin proteins are used to control agriculturally-relevant pests of crop plants by mechanical methods, such as spraying to disperse microbial formulations containing various bacteria strains onto plant surfaces, and by using genetic transformation techniques to produce transgenic plants and seeds expressing insecticidal toxin protein.
The use of transgenic plants expressing insecticidal proteins has been globally adopted. For example, in 2012, 26.1 million hectares were planted with transgenic crops expressing Bt toxins (James, C., Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops: 2012. ISAAA Brief No. 44). The global use of transgenic insect-protected crops and the limited number of insecticidal proteins used in these crops has created a selection pressure for existing insect alleles that impart resistance to the currently-utilized insecticidal proteins.
The development of resistance in target pests to insecticidal proteins creates the continuing need for discovery and development of new forms of insecticidal proteins that are useful for managing the increase in insect resistance to transgenic crops expressing insecticidal proteins. New insecticidal proteins with improved efficacy and which exhibit control over a broader spectrum of susceptible insect species will reduce the number of surviving insects which can develop resistance alleles. In addition, the use in one plant of two or more transgenic insecticidal proteins toxic to the same insect pest and displaying different modes of action reduces the probability of resistance in any single target insect species.
Consequently, there is a critical need to identify additional insecticidal proteins with improved insecticidal properties such as increased efficacy against a broader spectrum of target insect pests species and different modes of action compared to the toxins currently used in agricultural practices. To meet this need, the present invention discloses novel Cry1 chimeric insecticidal proteins that exhibit activity against significant target Lepidopteran pest species.
Members of the family of Cry1 crystal proteins are known in the art to exhibit bioactivity against Lepidopteran pests. The precursor form of Cry 1 crystal proteins consists of two approximately equal-sized segments. The carboxy-terminal portion of the precursor protein, known as the protoxin segment, stabilizes crystal formation and exhibits no insecticidal activity. The amino-terminal half of the precursor protein comprises the toxin segment of the Cry1 protein and, based on alignment of conserved or substantially conserved sequences within Cry1 family members, can be further sub-divided into three structural domains, domain I, domain II, and domain III. Domain I comprises about the first third of the active toxin segment and has been shown to be essential for channel formation. Domains II and III have both been implicated in receptor binding and insect species specificity, depending on the insect and insecticidal protein being examined.
The likelihood of arbitrarily creating a chimeric protein with enhanced properties from the assortment of the domain structures of the numerous native insecticidal proteins known in the art is remote. This is a result of the complex nature of protein structure, oligomerization, and activation (including correct proteolytic processing of the chimeric precursor, if expressed in such a form) required to release an insecticidal protein segment. Only by careful selection of protoxins and specific targets within each parental protein for the creation of a chimeric structure can functional chimeric insecticidal toxins be constructed that exhibit improved insecticidal activity in comparison to the parental proteins from which the chimeras are derived. It is known in the art that reassembly of the protoxin and toxin domains I, II and III of any two or more toxins that are different from each other often results in the construction of proteins that exhibit faulty crystal formation or the complete lack of any detectable insecticidal activity directed to a preferred target insect pest species. Only by trial and error are effective insecticidal chimeras designed, and even then, the skilled artisan is not certain to end up with a chimera that exhibits insecticidal activity that is equivalent to or improved in comparison to any single parental toxin protein from which the constituent protoxin or toxin domains of the chimera may have been derived. For example, the literature reports numerous examples of the construction or assembly of chimeric proteins from two or more crystal protein precursors. See, e.g. Jacqueline S. Knight, et al. “A Strategy for Shuffling Numerous Bacillus thuringiensis Crystal Protein Domains.” J. Economic Entomology, 97 (6) (2004): 1805-1813; Bosch, et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 6,204,246); Malvar and Gilmer (U.S. Pat. No. 6,017,534). In each of these examples, many of the resultant chimeras failed to exhibit insecticidal or crystal forming properties that were equivalent to or improved in comparison to the precursor proteins from which the components of the chimeras were derived.